Spotify CEO Daniel Ek says that they “could have done a better job” with the roll out of their new hateful conduct policy”.

Daniel EK has opened up on the rollout of Spotify’s policy on Hate Content and Hateful Conduct. Spotify’s new policy means that music can be removed from the service of official playlists which it deems to “promote, advocate, or incite hatred or violence”.

“While we don’t believe in censoring content because of an artist’s or creator’s behavior, we want our editorial decisions - what we choose to program - to reflect our values.

So, in some circumstances, when an artist or creator does something that is especially harmful or hateful (for example, violence against children and sexual violence), it may affect the ways we work with or support that artist or creator.”

Daniel Ek has taken personal responsibility for the rollout

The policy aims to promote “openness, diversity, tolerance and respect”, however, the implementation of the policy did not go down well with some after rapper XXXTentacion’s music was pulled from Spotify’s playlists. Kendrick Lamar reportedly threatened to pull his music from the platform if the policy stood in its current state.

In conversation with Variety, Daniel Ek has taken personal responsibility for the rollout, saying “we rolled this out wrong and could have done a much better job.” He also said that it was never Spotify’s intention to target particular artists; “the whole goal with this was to make sure that we didn’t have hate speech.”

Whilst the policy still stands on Spotify’s website, Ek has suggested that future amendments will be made to the policy.

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